Life would be intolerable if we were totally without the sort of security that comes from possessing a sense of place. We need to belong in a world that makes sense.

A Meaningful World

From the time we are very young, we form and reform our view of reality. It is only after we have ordered the world that we can see where we fit into the scheme of things. In the absence of an ordered world, we lack identity and purpose. It is for this reason that we wrestle throughout life with those factors that threaten to plunge us back into the terrifying darkness of meaninglessness. Out of necessity, we operate out of a world taken for granted.

Cultural Givens

While each of us interprets reality, external and internal, for himself or herself, none of us begins with a blank slate. We are born into families that have a particular view of the world. We are nurtured in specific cultures, and, through television, are increasingly influenced by civilisations geographically remote from our own. There is a sense in which we are heirs of the entire human experience. Psychic vestiges of civilisations, long dead, continue to influence our perception of the world and the way we live.

Our Deep Memories

It could be argued that, at the deepest level, we live out of our deep memories, those memories that are most responsible for the formulation of our taken-for-granted world. These are associated with the entire gamut of cultural associations, those of which we are conscious, those of which we are barely conscious and those of which we are wholly unconscious.

The content of our deep memories is embodied in myths, stories and symbols.

Myths

Myths are linguistically simple, but profound stories that give meaning to the deepest human experiences. Their language is the language of quintessence, of poetry, of parable and of archetype. They emerge from the unconscious life of a culture, from the powerful psyche, the inner generative core, of living cultures and civilisations. Illustrations of great myths are the Akkadian myth of the primeval flood, the Hebrew myth of the creation and fall, the Greek myth of Oedipus and Australian Aboriginal Dreamtime stories. [81]

Raimundo Panikkar, in Myth, Faith and Hermeneutic, has drawn a distinction between myth, the narrating of myth and the logical analysis of myth. He argues that ancient civilisations lived unselfconsciously and unreflectively out of their myths, which gave energy and direction to communities, whose psychic reality they shadowed. The telling of the myth was a midway point between the power of unarticulated myth and later analysis.¹

The logical explication of myth, in which myth is taken apart for study and observation, the self-conscious appropriation of myth, is its destruction. In taking its petals apart the flower is lost. While myth needs to be challenged, to determine whether it represents reality, as is evident from observation of the fate of the Communist and the Capitalist myths, the logical butchering that is involved results in a destruction of the myth. Once myths reach the stage of analysis, of logical explication, they have lost their primeval energy. They have lost the capacity to subliminally determine culture-specific attitudes and behaviour.

According to Ken Wilber, who has traced the development of human consciousness in Up From Eden, the Mythic Era stretched from 7000 to 3000 BCE. During this period civilisations gave birth to primeval myths which shaped the shared consciousness of agrarian city states. Unquestioned mythologies determined communal world-views. People lived their mythologies.

The gradual eclipse of community identity, after 3000 BCE, coincided with the emergence of what Wilber calls the Mental-Egoic era. This new phase in the development of consciousness saw the emergence of a predominant focus on the individual, over against the community, as the locus of identity. It also evidenced the substitution of logic for mythology as the determinant of meaning. As a consequence of these developments, new and quite different mythologies arose. Myths of the Mythic Era began to be critiqued for their lack of literal correspondence with reality, and were replaced by new mythologies, which highlighted the struggle of individuals for meaning and significance,² a transition that reflected the emergence of the sense of rational individuality.

Emerging from the unconscious, the common theme of these new myths, as Joseph Campbell pointed out, was the journey of the individual hero. The unenlightened and uninitiated were commissioned to assay dangerous, even impossible tasks that would bring profound benefit to the community. After innumerable frustrations, set-backs and encounters, that had them balanced on the edge between life and death, they emerged initiated, individuated and bearing treasure that would benefit society.³

We continue to generate fresh mythologies as older myths, that have lost their power, are taken apart, crated and stored for the benefit of historians. [82] The rapidity with which myths fall out of favour in contemporary society reflects the accelerating rate of change that is characteristic of our society and a secularism that has left us with a soulless, disenchanted world. In spite of this disenchantment, however, we unwittingly continue to reproduce behaviours that have been mythologically choreographed.⁴

Campbell argued that one of the functions of myths, which are an expression of the unconscious dimension of a culture, is to suggest ways in which dilemmas can be resolved in which new meanings and new patterns of existence can emerge. The manner in which the cultural unconscious works, through emergent mythologies, is similar to the way in which the unconscious of the individual will use dreams as a means of identifying and addressing issues.⁵

Stories

Unlike myths, stories are the stylised accounts of formative historical, or quasi-historical, events that are ritually celebrated. Illustrations of such paradigmatic stories are the Exodus, the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ, the Buddha's enlightenment, Mohammed's triumphant return to Mecca and Mao's long march.

The historical accuracy of the detail of these stories is, from one perspective, not of prime importance. The stylization, which ensures that the stories will have a forceful impact, sacrifices detail to effect. The detail is secondary. In fact, stories that are partially or wholly fabricated, can deeply influence behaviour.

This does not mean that the facticity of an event is unimportant. For Christianity, which argues that it is an historical religion, in the sense of being based on the facts of Christ's life, teaching, death and resurrection, the facticity of the central events in the life of Christ and the early church is of paramount importance.

Having said this, however, it also needs to be realized that historicism, the demand that every detail of historical narrative be absolutely factual, was a product of the 19th and not of the first century. It needs also to be recognized that historicism has been attacked by those who argue that historical facts do not come to us uninterpreted and who further contend that historians contribute to the creation of the reality they purport to detail. Stylised accounts of epoch-making events highlight central themes that are endorsed by a community of interpreter-participators, who clear away thickets of insubstantial detail in order to focus on what is of greatest significance.

The historicity of the secondary detail of the stories mentioned is problematic. As an event the Exodus was central to the development of the nation of Israel. Many details, however, are contested. Factors surrounding [83] the resurrection of Christ, the empty tomb, the appearances and the transformation of the disciples, are equally problematical. Biblical scholars and theologians are much more ready to speak of the theological import of the resurrection than they are to speak of its historicity. The Buddha's enlightenment, Mohammed's return to Mecca and Mao's long march are no less vulnerable to historical analysis.

There is one sense in which analysis is inappropriate in dealing with these stylised accounts of major historical events. The accounts have a specific purpose. They are intended to conscript one's allegiance to the community to whom the story belongs and for whose life and ethos it is formative.

To belong within a tradition one increasingly brings one's own personal story into conformity with the core story. In this conflation, both stories are altered. This helps explain differences in the Synoptic Gospels, which were written to address specific issues in different communities. This phenomenon is also related to the fact that once a historical event is recounted, once a story told, once a poem is shared, the author, in the telling, relinquishes ownership of the production in the sense of controlling its detail or its meaning. This process is referred to as the death of the author, and is inevitable if others are to appropriate what is being shared.

Symbols

Besides myths and stories, symbols are also important facilitators of the human journey.

Symbols are to be distinguished from signs in that they participate in the reality to which they witness. This is obvious in comparing a stop sign with a crucifix. The crucifix images the reality to which it draws attention, whereas the stop sign doesn't.⁶

There are different types of symbols, visual representations, rituals, or dramatic representations, and language, or linguistic symbols. Metaphors, as Sally McFague has argued, are potent linguistic symbols.⁷

Understanding Ourselves and Others

To truly understand ourselves, and to appreciate others, it is important for us to be aware of the myths, stories and symbols that powerfully influence us. To grow spiritually we need to deal with ourselves at the level of our deep memory, the source of those urges that exert a powerful influence on our conduct. This means exploring our personal unconscious and that of our culture, by attending to our dreams and by identifying and exploring cultural mythologies. [84]

Transformation

Individuals are transformed, not by mere talk, but by working with them at the level of their deep memories. This applies, not only to individual counselling, but also to the transformation of communities.

If you are convinced that a local congregation, for which you share responsibility, needs to change in order to survive or flourish, it will be imperative that you appreciate, not only the relational complexities and formal and informal lines of authority within the congregation, but also its myths, its stories, its symbols and its heroes.

Within a local congregation, besides the core Christian inheritance and denominational traditions, there are specific local myths, stories and symbols which surface whenever people are threatened by change. Change is facilitated when we work with a congregation's myths, stories and symbols, grafting the new onto the old.⁸

Deep Ecumenism

While we cannot avoid living out of a particular tradition, a tradition that adds richness and colour to our existence and that shapes our world taken-for-granted, we need to sympathetically search others traditions, denominational traditions, cultural traditions and the traditions of other religions, for over-reaching understandings and experiences that we have in common and that can form the basis of dialogue and communion. It is in this way that we will promote understanding, peace and unity, a unity that respects diversity and in which there is scope for each tradition to be challenged and enriched by the others. In this we will be co-operating with a God whose ultimate purpose is to bring all peoples, all history, the entire ecosystem and whatever lies beyond, into a unity within the constitutive Logos that holds it all together. In pursuing this course we will be flowing with and in the direction of the energy of divine Grace. [85]

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